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Emelline Pankhurst, an English woman started it all
of course by highlighting the need for women to be allowed to vote
and to work, in some cases take over jobs until then held only by
men. At one point she chained herself to the railings outside No. 10
Downing Street, the British Prime Minister’s house in London, to
bring attention to her suffragette cause. This was in the early
1900’s and came to a head around the time of the First-World War
in 1914-1918. She succeeded she brought about through here movement
the right for women to vote (albeit those over 30 at the time, and
with a property ownership qualification!) and have greater
opportunity in jobs.
Since then things have developed
further, in most places, women have a right to vote and there are
varying degrees of work sharing between men and women. Where
national cultures allow it is of course right that women should take
a full part in the workforce and, of course, vote—and please
don’t take that as a patronizing statement!
Communism allowed a great leap
forward for women’s rights and in particular their ability to take
an active part in the workforce. In Russia and China women have for
a long time not been differentiated from men in their abilities to
undertake manual labor and do “heavy” jobs such a driving buses
or large trucks. It could be interpreted that the Chinese one-child
policy had a link with ensuring that women were more fully available
to do their part in the workforce, as well as keep the lid on
population growth. There are many very physically strong women
around in those societies.
So now we have progressed towards
a unisex society? It seems that the developed countries have higher
proportions of women in the (nonagricultural) labor force that the
less developed countries. In America the proportion of women and men
in the labor force is converging, there are now 60 percent of all
women taking part in the labor force compared to 74 percent of men
(in 1970 it was 43 percent of women and 80 percent of men). Things
are indeed changing, I know of several foreign ladies who are posted
in the Philippines for their work and have accompanying husbands.
In the less developed countries
many women are employed in agriculture, in South East Asia and India
about 70 percent of the working female population is employed in
agriculture, working on land that they do not own and frequently
paid less than men for doing comparable jobs. The cry for women’s
rights persists therefore strongest and with greater cause in Asia.
Educational materials have not quite caught up with this; children
are still taught in a mother centric way despite the fact that
fathers, if women are to have the equality which they espouse,
should be overtly recognized as playing an important sometimes
pivotal role with the upbringing of the children. “Mother’s
day” is always a much bigger event then “father’s day!”
When I was a child I was taught
to give up my seat to lady, not to fight with girls, to hold doors
open for ladies, bring them flowers if they needed emotional
reassurance and do all the “gentle” sort of things that society
perceived women needed to reflect their femininity. But do
“equal” women in the developed world still appreciate this sort
of thing or are these just old fashioned outdated chivalrous values,
that in some cases can be seen as demeaning women’s roles? In the
developed world I suspect that they are indeed outdated, in the less
developed world I suspect that they would not even be properly
understood—money spent on a bunch of flowers is wasted, it would
be better spent on a few kilos of rice for example? What contrasts
between a developed society and those which are less
“fortunate.”
We have come a long way from
Plato’s “Laws” and his views of the roles of women in society
but is the eventual aim really to bring about a unisex world or will
differences between men and women in the workforce and by extension,
in life, still be recognized. How far should equality go?
Mike can be contacted at mawootton@gmail.com
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